Evolution And Natural Selection The Benefits Of Mutation

Evolution and Natural Selection; The benefits of Mutation Areeba Yousuf Introduction Charles Darwin, a naturalist around the 1800’s , discovered the theory of evolution. He discovered this observation of evolution with his voyages around the world. The specific animals that proved Darwin s theory were the finches he discovered in South America, and then found many variations at many different places. He studies these finches in depth and discovered that they were similar yet somehow different; the first indicator being their beaks. Darwin slowly understood that the reason as to why there were different formation of beaks for the fiches was because of the environment and the food source they found there. This is how the â€Å"Tree of†¦show more content†¦Eventually, this trait will be passed onto generations forward. Evolution and the process of natural selection happen over a long period of time. In order to explore the evolution of species adapting to the their environment, in this case, the species being beetles, the purpose of this lab was to investigate evolution of beetles as they adapt to their different colored environments and to see how favorable traits are passed off to offspring in relation to the survival rate of the beetle’s species. This experiment would successfully prove Darwin’s five step natural selection process: â€Å"To summarise Darwin s Theory of Evolution; 1. Variation: There is Variation in Every Population. 2. Competition: Organisms Compete for limited resources. 3. Offspring: Organisms produce more Offspring than can survive. 4. Genetics: Organisms pass Genetic traits on to their offspring. 5. Natural Selection: Those organisms with the Most Beneficial Traits are more likely to Survive and Reproduce.† (The Theory of Evolution; Charles Darwin,2012) The hypothesis is that if more mutation that leads to variation in the population of beetles is an advantage then the resulting offspring would carry on the favorable genes, causing increase in the population’s fitness and survival rate. Materials and Methods The experiment was conducted on March